Interactive Read Aloud-Read with a Purpose-Story #2

The book: "Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon" by Patty Lovell and illustrated by David Catrow, is an amusing book that is about a young girl with some interesting abilities and who is also a bit different from most other children. The children learn that being different isn't a bad thing through the actions and behaviors of Molly Lou and the wise advise from her Grandmother. 

Class structure:
1. Introductions of students and teacher are shared.

2. Teacher explains the rules of the Interactive Read Aloud:
a. Eyes on the story or who is speaking
b. Ears listening to the speaker
c. Treat the speaker with a kind heart and respond in a way that we would like to be treated. 

3. The teacher will lead the class in reading of the book,  "Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon".  Students will have the opportunity to answer comprehension questions about the story as the book is read. Students who like to read aloud can volunteer to read to the class. Students will be encouraged to respond to students' answers to  the questions with the sentence stems: 

I agree with ___________ because____________.
I disagree with__________ because___________.
I like what you said about__________. I think_________.
I heard you say _________ and I'd like to add more. 

The goal of using these sentence stems, is to encourage the students to form thoughtful responses to classmates. Students will also be encouraged to work with other students to defend and give evidence for their opinions. 

In this Story Session #2, the comprehension skills taught are: Main Character and Character Traits. The class will identify the main character of the story and the characters inner and outer traits. 


Note: Class is designed for Kindergarten to 1st grade level students, but younger or older students my enjoy the format as well depending on their reading level.